Bereaved friends seek strength together

She was the last one to show up for the meeting. She was clad in black dress pants and a neat black blouse; the purse she carried looked heavy, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

By Kim Ring TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

She was the last one to show up for the meeting.

She was clad in black dress pants and a neat black blouse; the purse she carried looked heavy, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

At the back of the room, she sat alone, declining an offer to join the group until about two hours later when she found herself telling everyone at The Compassionate Friends' meeting her name, “Peggy.”

With a little encouragement she told her story, a story so heartbreaking it rattled everyone in the room, which is filled with parents who have lost children in a variety of ways.

Peggy's daughter died from heroin. A widow, Peggy buried her child, one of four, and then coped with her son's attempt to take his life because the grief was too much. All of this had happened in the previous three weeks, and she found her way to a meeting of The Compassionate Friends because they are the only ones who understand.

“Everyone here has lost a child,” the group's leader, Phyllis Simas, explained as they gathered at the First Baptist Church on Park Avenue, as they do the first Tuesday of every month. “It's not a group anyone wants to belong to, but here we are.”

Her own daughter, Danielle Simas, was 17 when she died in a car accident that shook her friends at Shrewsbury High School. Police said the accident happened when her car hydroplaned on wet roads.

For days and months after the accident, Mrs. Simas wondered how she would go on. She sought solace with others like her here and has been coming back for 13 years.

“I laugh, I smile, I go on vacation,” she said. “I never thought I would.”

Lisa Holbrook thought that, too, when she started coming here. Her son, Chad Holbrook of Upton, died in a car accident in 2009.

“I'd think, `Why is that grass growing? Why is that flower blooming when my son is dead?' ” she said. “Then you don't want the leaves to fall off the trees because they're the last leaves that were here when he was alive.”

She quickly learned, as her family priest warned her, that her address book was being rewritten as a result of her loss. Old friends would be less close because they didn't know what to say.

But at The Compassionate Friends meetings, she added new names to her address book, names of people whose forever-changed lives are held together by a horrible common bond, and who don't turn away when she wants to talk about the child she misses so much.

Most members said they have learned ways to honor their child at the meetings.

Jody McKenna held a bowling tournament and gave the money to Special Olympics recently because it would have been her daughter Karli's birthday. On her actual birthday, they will eat red velvet cake as she would have.

Others have had laws passed in the hopes they will spare another parent their grief. Some offer scholarships. A few sport tattoos of their children's names or symbols with special meaning.

While Peggy listened to other parents talk, a man at the table shared that his son also had died three weeks earlier and this was his first meeting.

David and his wife, AnnMarie, sat across from him. David had been comforting Peggy quietly after he and his wife talked about their son, who died from auto-erotic asphyxiation.

When he returned to his seat he told the two newcomers he understood.

“You must believe me,” he said, he pleaded. “It's not going to be like this forever ... it's not going to stay like this ... you've got to believe me.”

Many of the group's members find solace at the meetings, and some will attend the annual conference of The Compassionate Friends in Boston in July. Those who have been to the national conferences before said it is a weekend of helpful workshops and sharing sessions that end with A Walk to Remember, which honors their children.

Eric Simas, Mrs. Simas' son, said the workshops at the conference are wide-ranging and offer something for every bereaved family.

“I am helping with the siblings programs,” he said, adding that to lose a brother or sister can be very tough because parents are caught up in their own grief. “There are activities and speakers who are for siblings only.”

He said the group has been helpful because he remembers thinking his family would never survive the loss of his older sister.

“People find comfort there,” he said.

Contact Kim Ring at kring@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @kimmring.

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